IAM AGM

[Porker]

There isn't a problem per se, because you go slowly enough to have enough time - and this in in no way a bad thing. If however, you were minded to drive somewhat more spiritedly, I believe you drive would, to employ a professional term, go to tits. In short, I think the reason your system works for you is because you don't go quickly enough for your lack of planning and observation to become a hindrance.

Dave (Triple)

I think that's the crux of the matter, to be honest, and it came through quite clearly to me in our drive together. What cannot be construed from your approach and its success to date is that your current method would be suitable under a wider range of circumstances.

However, I do believe that this thought process is one of the things that prevents the broader mass of drivers from looking beyond what they do now and considering further training. That is, their own experience - in the main - argues that they're doing it right, so why should they change?

Now, I can easily accept that you may not want to drive any more quickly than you currently do, but the very same methods can be used to deliver an ultra-chauffeur style which is smoothness exemplified, which might appeal more.

regards
P.

[TripleS]

TripleS Dave, I have a number of questions for you.

Can I ask you about your attitude to system? Is it just The System you don't like - ie the particular order in which Roadcraft tells us to do things - or do you object to the whole idea of trying to do things in a systematic, one could say consistent, way?

Hello, Mark - I do not dislike The System, but I don't see the need to follow it precisely in all circumstances, so long as we can apply a plausible alternative method. I'm very much in favour of having 'A System' and I don't much care what it is, so long as it has been adequately proved to the satisfaction of the user over a long enough period in a wide variety of circumstances. A good level of consistency is also very important, so long as we're deploying satisfactory methods.

Can you see that though your approach works well for you, with your experience and without any need to achieve maximum safe progress, on the other hand it might not be a teachable approach nor one on which it was suitable to build to achieve maximum safe progress?

StressedDave and yourself appear to have formed the view that my system only works because I sacrifice progress. I disagree with that. As for my style being teachable to others, I really don't know whether that would be feasible or not. For my own purposes I maintain that I can achieve a very high rate of progress and retain a high level of safety while doing it, but we have never examined that. I am therefore reluctant to accept verdicts (favourable or otherwise) as being final at this stage.

Do you believe that if you had to train a large number of young people to drive very quickly and safely, as the police do, you could find a better way to do it than teaching them The System?

No, I make no such claim. For their particular purposes I would not seek to interfere with what they are already doing. Their approach has proved itself very well in their circumstances, but their circumstances are unusual, and for general usage I think other methods may be equally satisfactory. I would not wish to insist on what they might be, but I merely suggest that there may be alternatives.

Since professionally skilled advanced drivers (serving and retired police officers) give their services to the IAM and Rospa, can you see why those organisations take advantage of their expertise, which involves acceptance of The System?

Yes, certainly. They have proven expertise and I see no grounds for disputing it, and no need to seek alternatives. Whether or not the IAM could usefully change their specification is something I'm less sure about. I tend to think they could.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[TripleS]

....you go slowly enough to have enough time - and this in in no way a bad thing. If however, you were minded to drive somewhat more spiritedly, I believe your drive would, to employ a professional term, go to tits. In short, I think the reason your system works for you is because you don't go quickly enough for your lack of planning and observation to become a hindrance.

With respect, I totally disagree with that.

I know we're not supposed to say this sort of thing here - sorry, Darren - but I frequently cover a lot of ground very quickly, and it does not yield anxious moments, or any sign that there are going to be any - for anybody.

I'm sorry, Dave, but much as I admire your expertise, I completely disagree with the conclusion you seem to have reached on this point.

Maybe the explanation is that I raise my game as the speed (sorry, not speed; should we say rate of progress?) goes up; I don't know, but something doesn't tally.

Oh circular spheroids - I need some more liquid.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[waremark]

Can I ask you about your attitude to system? Is it just The System you don't like - ie the particular order in which Roadcraft tells us to do things - or do you object to the whole idea of trying to do things in a systematic, one could say consistent, way?

I personally object to having such a rigourous 'way' of doing things. If parts 1 & 2 above are in place, you've actually got all the time in the world to do it anyway you choose.

This was an answer from Dave, but not from the Dave to whom I asked the question! Stressed D, you do drive systematically, and whether or not you teach them using this vocabulary, I suspect that your successful pupils drive systematically also.

You do not of course stick rigidly to The System, but then you have reached a level of virtuosity at which it is appropriate to explore other techniques; and all is built on a sound base. If there is a difference of view between us, it is about whether as you suggest this sound base needs only Observation, Anticipation and Planning, or if it is more helpful for it to include a bit of technique also.

I agree with everything else in Stressed D's post.

By the way - probably not the right place to communicate this - I am one of the many to whose driving Stressed D has made a significant contribution, and I am most grateful.

[waremark]

TripleS Dave, I have a number of questions for you.

Can I ask you about your attitude to system? Is it just The System you don't like - ie the particular order in which Roadcraft tells us to do things - or do you object to the whole idea of trying to do things in a systematic, one could say consistent, way?

Hello, Mark - I do not dislike The System, but I don't see the need to follow it precisely in all circumstances, so long as we can apply a plausible alternative method. I'm very much in favour of having 'A System' and I don't much care what it is, so long as it has been adequately proved to the satisfaction of the user over a long enough period in a wide variety of circumstances. A good level of consistency is also very important, so long as we're deploying satisfactory methods.

Ah, this is interesting: I did not think you saw the value in consistency, so perhaps we have a different understanding of what consistency means. What are the essential features of this System of yours, by which I could recognise that someone was driving to your system?

BTW Dave, I am most impressed by the eloquence of your prose, if really written after the benefit (??) of significant lubrication!

[waremark]

Since professionally skilled advanced drivers (serving and retired police officers) give their services to the IAM and Rospa, can you see why those organisations take advantage of their expertise, which involves acceptance of The System?

Yes, certainly. They have proven expertise and I see no grounds for disputing it, and no need to seek alternatives. Whether or not the IAM could usefully change their specification is something I'm less sure about. I tend to think they could.

I think you are suggesting that some other system of road driving might be better suited to civilian use. I agree that is quite possible.

However, the IAM has a ready made network of experts able and willing to teach and assess their System. I cannot see that they could ever have the resources to do the same with any other system.

[waremark]

We seem to have come rather a long way from the topic 'IAM AGM'.

[JamesAllport]

Since we've drifted a very long way from the IAM AGM can I ask a question of Dave (Triple)?

You've quite often said recently that your view is that only police advanced drivers are truly "advanced drivers" - presumably because only they are able lawfully to make maximum safe progress. My question is:

Do you have any experience of being driven by a police advanced driver making "maximum safe progress" operationally?

I only ask because I have, and the only thing I learned was that I never want to drive like that. If that means that I'll never be truly advanced, I'd be very comfortable with that.

It wasn't that the drive was unsafe or lacked polish in any way. This was a seriously accomplished policeman, not someone who scraped through their advanced course. If he was making mistakes, they were too nuanced for the likes of me to spot.

But it was, in the words of the song, not for me.

James

[TripleS]

There isn't a problem per se, because you go slowly enough to have enough time - and this in in no way a bad thing. If however, you were minded to drive somewhat more spiritedly, I believe you drive would, to employ a professional term, go to tits. In short, I think the reason your system works for you is because you don't go quickly enough for your lack of planning and observation to become a hindrance.

Dave (Triple)

I think that's the crux of the matter, to be honest, and it came through quite clearly to me in our drive together. What cannot be construed from your approach and its success to date is that your current method would be suitable under a wider range of circumstances.

However, I do believe that this thought process is one of the things that prevents the broader mass of drivers from looking beyond what they do now and considering further training. That is, their own experience - in the main - argues that they're doing it right, so why should they change?

Now, I can easily accept that you may not want to drive any more quickly than you currently do, but the very same methods can be used to deliver an ultra-chauffeur style which is smoothness exemplified, which might appeal more.

regards
P.

Many thanks for your comments, Nick, but if you are saying that my experience and current style are (reasonably) satisfactory largely because I confine myself to a lowish rate of progress, than I shall srongly disagree with that. When I feel like it and the conditions are suitable I can make an extremely good rate of progress, and it still doesn't produce anxious moments, or much sign that there are going to be any.

With respect I think both Dave and yourself have, relatively speaking, made judgements based on quite short assessment periods. If we were to cover a few hundred miles together (assuming either of you could face that!) in a wide variety of road conditions, I think you might come to a different conclusion. On the other hand you may not. Perhaps the verdict would be unfavourable after all, which would be disappointing to me of course, but not the end of the world.

There is no escaping the fact that I've had a very good record over an extremely long period, and that is a fact, so while luck plays a part for all of us, I don't feel I've depended on that factor too much - but then I would say that.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[TripleS]

AS we're clearly going to disagree on this, one quick question, that even an inebriated TripleS should be able to answer. These roads where you are capable of covering ground at great speed and in perfect safety, are they familiar to you? Can you achieve the same on a completely unfamiliar road?

If the answer to the latter is 'no', then the term we tend to use for such is 'driving locally'.

Hello, Dave - yes, I'm sorry we're having such difficulty in agreeing. This is clearly going to get tiresome for you, and others, so it seems best if I shut up on this subject after today.

The answer to your question is that I'm not dependent on the use of familiar roads for making good progress.

I travel slowly or quickly on any roads, according to how I feel at the time and what I judge to be safe. Being on familiar ground should not enable us to go faster. We're still depemdent on the prevailing conditions, and what we can see and evaluate.

Advanced drivers in general seem to hold the view that they should always be seeking to 'make progress' and I don't work on that basis. It seems reasonable to me that the nature of the drive, and the level of progress made, ought to be influenced by the particular mood of the driver at the time, and the interests of any passengers, and I was glad to find that at least one advanced driver, for whom I have considerable regard, recently agreed with this.

One should seek to produce an advanced quality of drive consistently, but the level of progress should be a rather more flexible matter, I would have thought.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[vonhosen]

AS we're clearly going to disagree on this, one quick question, that even an inebriated TripleS should be able to answer. These roads where you are capable of covering ground at great speed and in perfect safety, are they familiar to you? Can you achieve the same on a completely unfamiliar road?

If the answer to the latter is 'no', then the term we tend to use for such is 'driving locally'.

Hello, Dave - yes, I'm sorry we're having such difficulty in agreeing. This is clearly going to get tiresome for you, and others, so it seems best if I shut up on this subject after today.

The answer to your question is that I'm not dependent on the use of familiar roads for making good progress.

I travel slowly or quickly on any roads, according to how I feel at the time and what I judge to be safe. Being on familiar ground should not enable us to go faster. We're still depemdent on the prevailing conditions, and what we can see and evaluate.

Advanced drivers in general seem to hold the view that they should always be seeking to 'make progress' and I don't work on that basis. It seems reasonable to me that the nature of the drive, and the level of progress made, ought to be influenced by the particular mood of the driver at the time, and the interests of any passengers, and I was glad to find that at least one advanced driver, for whom I have considerable regard, recently agreed with this.

One should seek to produce an advanced quality of drive consistently, but the level of progress should be a rather more flexible matter, I would have thought.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

I'd agree with that.

An advanced drive should be able to performed at any speed. The speed is after all relative to the objective & that doesn't preclude you from performing in what could be called an advanced fashion at low speeds (should lower speeds adequately suit the objective).

[TripleS]

I did a drive accompanied by an advanced driving instructor and he complained about my cornering. He described the car as 'wallowing' through the bends, and claimed that we could 'feel the front end washing out' and the car wanting to go 'flying off the road'. He also warned of what may happen if we encountered a micro-climate or a diesel spill, and obviously felt that we were vulnerable to such problems. I didn't see this at all.

No, you wouldn't. You've been driving successfully (as defined by number of miles driven divided by the number of flaming wrecks and crashed cars) for half a century and see no reason to change anything about your driving. To me, your cornering method is wasteful of the grip budget (and the advanced guy you were with has sadly been heavily influenced by my close relationship with my right boot) and doesn't give you anywhere near enough control over the line you take, except by use of extra steering. In extremis - the micro-climate or diesel spill, you've lost one method of controlling your attitude. You're fine with that - I'm not.

But, and there's always a big 'but', would you corner the same way if you'd dropped a b*****k and suddenly need a lot more cornering force than your lolloping style would normally require? IME I never attended a fatal RTA caused by overconfidence, but hundreds caused by its sudden departure. In an emergency situation you need to be able to control the car rather than hoping that the engineers at Peugeot have designed enough compliance into the car to stop you crashing. Now your style will work perfectly adequately until you make a mistake and then because you haven't got the car properly balanced, because you haven't got the muscle memory to consistently use the minimum grip necessary for any combination of speed and radius, you'll potentially have an issue. You might think you'll never make a mistake that big, but I know that the better I get as a driver the less perfect I become...

Beg pardon, Dave, but once again I don't see what the problem is here, and again it might be my fault, but I don't.

If I corner smoothly and steadily, with steering input applied early and gently, and I take a line that allows room for a bit of adjustment, and all this is placing low demands on the car, so that I have something decent in reserve for unexpected problems, why should this be felt to be appreciably lacking?

The demonstration I received on that day at ES felt to me as if the driver was almost provoking the car, asking it how much he could get away with. Maybe that's not at all what he was doing, and it was a further misunderstanding on my part, but I felt less secure with that style than I did my own.

Sorry, but......

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[waremark]

I'm quite happy agreeing that I don't use the vocabulary of a system in coaching.

Reminds me that John Lyon who was my advanced driving coach taught The System, but did not talk about it. The first time I heard of a limit point was during my IAM Test.

[TripleS]

I did not think you saw the value in consistency, so perhaps we have a different understanding of what consistency means.

Maybe we do, but I'm not able to explain it with confidence. Consistency might not actually be the right word, maybe I should have said reliability. I certainly didn't mean consistency in the sense of uniformity, because I prefer a good deal of flexibility, so long we are readily able to produce a suitable technique to get the job done decently - whatever it might be.

What are the essential features of this System of yours, by which I could recognise that someone was driving to your system?

On reflection I don't believe I have an identifiable System as such, that sounds too flattering, maybe it's more a matter of a style, or a general attitude and approach, which again is a bit vague and not too helpful. I see it as a fairly wide variety of methods of dealing with things, and to me they seem to work comfortably and reliably, even if they fail to reassure the critical onlooker, especially if he happens to be something of a specialist in these matters. It's like having a large and somewhat ramshackle toolbox with lots of useful odds and ends in it, none of which look very special, but they somehow seem to get the jobs done OK.

BTW Dave, I am most impressed by the eloquence of your prose, if really written after the benefit (??) of significant lubrication!

Oh thanks, but yes, I did have that benefit. It was much needed too.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[TripleS]

Since we've drifted a very long way from the IAM AGM can I ask a question of Dave (TripleS)?

You've quite often said recently that your view is that only police advanced drivers are truly "advanced drivers" - presumably because only they are able lawfully to make maximum safe progress. My question is:

Do you have any experience of being driven by a police advanced driver making "maximum safe progress" operationally?

A minor detail, if I may, before answering the question: The 'lawfully' bit isn't significant to me. At the moment my feeling is that police advanced drivers, and any other individuals who receive their level of training and pass their tests, count as advanced drivers, whether it is done by lawful processes or otherwise. It is the resultant standard that counts.

Now to answer the question:
No, I don't, but it is something that I would very much like to do if the opportunity were to arise, though I have no idea what the outcome might be. Maybe it would be quite different from what I've been picturing; I might find it terrifying and change my views somewhat, in which case that would be a disappointing conclusion for me to have to reach. On the other hand it might reinforce my current view. Who can say?

I only ask because I have, and the only thing I learned was that I never want to drive like that. If that means that I'll never be truly advanced, I'd be very comfortable with that.

It wasn't that the drive was unsafe or lacked polish in any way. This was a seriously accomplished policeman, not someone who scraped through their advanced course. If he was making mistakes, they were too nuanced for the likes of me to spot.

But it was, in the words of the song, not for me.

James

No, quite obviously it wouldn't be for me either, firstly because the training is not available, and even if it were somehow to be made available, it would be wrong to assume that I would make the grade, so to speak. I'm sure I couldn't now, even if that ever was a possibility. After all, Von - who must be about the same age as my son - has stated that his best driving days are behind him. I don't see why he should say that, but no doubt he will have some logical reason.

Best wishes all,
Dave.